Homeschooling

Homeschooling is an alternative form of education in which parents teach their children at home instead of enrolling them to public or private schools. Parents decide on the subject matter, develop a curriculum for each subject, set and mark examinations, and determine their children’s progress. The quality of education that a homeschooled child attains depends on the resources and opportunities accessible to their parents. The quality of education also depends on the competence of a parent who in this case assumes the full responsibility of a trained tutor or teacher.

Why do parents choose homeschooling?

Statistics indicate that more parents are choosing to educate their children instead of enrolling them to schools. Parents choose this education option for different reasons. Some parents consider public schools as secular while some disagree with religious lessons taught in schools. They choose to protect their children from such teachings and raise them in their preferred religious beliefs at home. Most parents who educate their children believe they can offer a better education or teach their children better than teachers in schools. Others prefer homeschooling because it gives a family more time to bond and interact. Parents can monitor the development of their children easily and closely.

Parents whose jobs involve travelling throughout the year prefer this education option to balance family time and work. This form of education is excellent for children with special needs and talented children who need to develop their talents and study at the same time. Homeschooling allows a parent to give full attention and care to their disabled children. Parents choose homeschooling to protect their children from bullying especially in cases where a child was bullied before in a school. In addition, parents consider homeschooling a perfect way of protecting their children from peer pressure that could lead to crime and drug addiction.

Disadvantages of homeschooling

One main disadvantage of homeschooling is that children miss socialization and interactions with other children. This interaction is crucial to a child’s development especially in developing social skills. Homeschooling is tedious and requires parents to forego other activities and job opportunities to educate their children. It requires parents to learn each subject, organize class activities, develop curricula and grade their children among other things. This is challenging when a parents has many children at different levels of education. Some parents choose homeschooling assuming that they can do better than fully trained tutors can. This is not always the case and their children either obtain low quality education or miss some key lessons and skills taught by professional tutors.